


deus ibi est

by endquestionmark



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 14:59:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8213324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endquestionmark/pseuds/endquestionmark
Summary: “See, the way I figure it, there’s more than one way to take comfort in a house of God," Faraday says. "Your call. Only best I can say is that most praying involves kneeling of one kind or another, and I'm not much good at the other varieties."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Mari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starstrung) and [Cat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostohelit) for this opportunity to pay my yearly dues to the guild of dragging Catholicism's good name through the mud. Feel free to consider this a down payment for yours as well.

Everyone in their merry band of fools is too tired to do more than a little of everything on the first night that they spend in Rose Creek; a little revelry, a little mockery, a little debauchery of the sort found in the rooms above the bar, which is conducted at very reasonable rates of exchange. Besides Bogue’s mines — and the establishments that support them, making Rose Creek a town qualified for the title by something more than its name and the number on the signpost a mile down the road — pleasure is the only other business in town.

Faraday avails himself of as much of the townspeoples’ hospitality as he can before they wear out their welcome. He drinks and makes merry, taking the usual last rites of a condemned man, and then he excuses himself to find a warm bed and a willing body to occupy himself for the rest of the night. Upstairs, he finds a woman of the looks that he favors, fine bones and dark features, and doesn't bother being too quiet about it. Afterwards, he sleeps. If their days are going to be occupied with planning, Faraday plans to make up for it when the sun goes down, and no more work can be done.

On their second night in town he goes looking for more comprehensive trouble, already bored with the more commonplace variety, and finds it — of all places — in the church. The building is still burnt out, left as a monument to Bogue’s possession and the town’s lack of recourse against it, so there isn't much to see. The wooden floor is bare, and there are no pews; the nave is dark, save for the few flickering shadows borrowed from torchlight outside and a firepit built in the next lot over.

One shadow, long and dark and a hair steadier than the rest, stretches from where Vasquez stands — where the front row would most likely have been in better times — to the space where even Faraday can feel the absence of an altar. He imagines the great gouts of flame that must have leapt to the rafters, leaving the roof flaked to ash like so much old newsprint; the way that smoke must have poured out through the broken windows, like a ship sinking in reverse, as the pews crumbled to embers. Vasquez stands silently with his hat in his hands, head bowed and feet set, and Faraday watches him from the doorway for as long as he can remain silent.

Not long, as it turns out; he clears his throat after a minute. “If the good Lord’s got any words of advice, tell Him there’s no point holding out on us,” Faraday says, because he’s never been able to help himself when it comes to raising the stakes. “Odds are we’ll all be having that word with Him in person sooner rather than later anyway.”

“Do you mind,” Vasquez says, not turning around.

Faraday grins and parries. “Don’t mind if I do.” He slides around the doorframe, back never leaving the wall, to stand inside the church proper. “Oh, suppose I should—“ He takes his hat off, because now Vasquez is looking, and Faraday is an all-for-show kind of man. “—Guess that might be too little too late, though?” He grins. “You tell me.”

“I’m not the one you have to worry about answering to,” Vasquez says. Faraday can see the tension creeping back into his posture, his squared shoulders and set jaw, as he turns halfway back to the cross painted on the wall before giving up. “Your soul is none of my business.”

“Guess not.” Faraday crosses his arms. “Guess that means you won’t be putting in a word for me with the Almighty.”

Vasquez snorts. “Good guess.”

“But truly,” Faraday says. He pushes himself off the wall and crosses the room, boots loud on the buckled planks; the stillness of the church must have been another casualty of the fire. Through the burned-out walls, the soot-arched windows, he can hear singing from the saloon and the faint whickering of their horses. Crickets chirp in the low scrub grass around the foundations of the building, and one sings persistently from somewhere beneath the floorboards. The church, ruined as it is, feels more like an empty frame than the heart of the town. It feels like the picked-clean ribcage of some long-dead pack animal, overburdened for the last time. “If a man wanted to pray, to find some solace in his final hours from a quarter he’d never paid much mind to before, how would he do that, do you think.”

Vasquez watches him come, and crosses his own arms. “He might start by being less of—“ He catches himself, although Faraday can see that it costs him a significant effort. “—By being less self-absorbed, and thinking of less worldly things once in a while,” Vasquez says, hurling each word at Faraday individually. “By showing his fellow man the same courtesy with which he would like to be treated.”

Faraday laughs aloud at that, unable to suppress his amusement. “Oh, me?” he says. “You don’t want me to use myself as an example for that, no sir. I’m easy as hell. Give me good odds and a minute of your time and I’m happy. You might need to work on your preaching if you’re going to get all evangelical at me.”

“You asked,” Vasquez points out.

“That I did,” Faraday says. Eye to eye, Vasquez is only a little taller than him; on the other hand, if Faraday has the weight advantage, it isn't by much. At the moment, Vasquez almost certainly has righteous fury on his side. Faraday evaluates him as a matter of old habit. In any given room, odds are that he’ll start a fight — or that a fight will start around him, completely unrelated to his spotless innocence — sooner or later, so Faraday has learned to get ahead of the game when he can.

Vasquez is, for some reason, of particular interest. Faraday has no idea what makes him tick, or how Chisolm had convinced him to come along on their fool’s errand of an enterprise. He barely remembers coming back to camp to find Vasquez already there, Emma and Chisolm none the worse for wear that he could see. Goodnight had been generous with his winnings and his hospitality, and even more generous with doubles at the ramshackle bar put together out of leftover siding at the work camp where he had gone to ground. Billy had sat watching them in silence — taciturn as ever, although he and Goodnight seemed to share a silent understanding — but at least Faraday could understand why he had followed them.

Loyalty, although something that Faraday grasps more as a matter of theory than one of practice, seems as good a reason to him as any to follow a man to a shared dusty death. It certainly doesn’t seem to be why he tolerates Faraday’s incessant provocation, though hell if Faraday knows why Chisolm puts up with him either; he intends to keep pushing his luck until he finds out. Vasquez seems like the sort to walk away while he’s still ahead, but Faraday has a knack for getting people to keep playing long after it would have been wise for them to fold. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, after all.

Faraday steps forward. Vasquez steps back, placing one foot deliberately behind the other on the shifting floorboards, until he has his back to the wall. “See, the way I figure it, there’s more than one way to take comfort in a house of God.”

“What?” Vasquez says.

Bless his heart, Faraday thinks. He actually has no idea. "Give you something to confess, how's that?" he says, and when Vasquez blinks at him, Faraday takes another step forward and snags him by the belt loops, pulling so that Vasquez loses his balance and leans back to stay upright. He shoves at Faraday's shoulders.

"Not funny, cabrón," he says, though there isn't any real force to his words this time.

Faraday takes half a step back to call his bluff anyway, raising his hands.

"Your call," he says. "Only best I can say is that most praying involves kneeling of one kind or another, and I'm not much good at the other varieties."

He steps forward again and this time Vasquez doesn't push him away, doesn't swear; he just tips his head back against the wall and closes his hands into fists. Faraday decides to take it as a yes, or as close to one as he's ever going to get. The edge of Vasquez's belt catches on his calluses, pulling at the powder burns still warm at his fingertips, and Faraday goes to his knees like a man with an ace up his sleeve. He knows that his manner makes men nervous, and can get a rise out of the steadiest temper. Vasquez is far from implacable.

Faraday is counting on it. He undoes Vasquez's belt and gets his fly open, and doesn’t bother with much more than that. If Vasquez gets a chance to think, then he might have second thoughts, and Faraday doesn’t want that. What he does want is for Vasquez to take a little initiative, and use those big capable hands of his for something other than contrition. He wants to give a little solace, if only to get some in return; Faraday sleeps more and more fitfully these days, and it helps to have company.

At the very least he can content himself with the knowledge of a job well done. If Vasquez insists on calling it blasphemy, then Faraday intends to be thorough in its commission. What he lacks in the way of natural talent, he makes up for in enthusiasm and availability and more than a little practice.

Vasquez doesn’t complain, either way. If Faraday had to guess, he would say that a life on the run doesn’t leave much room for everyday pleasures. He might have been run out of more than his fair share of settlements, but Faraday has never been hunted beyond town limits. So much the better, since he thrives on company and attention, but it means that he knows something about Vasquez. The tiniest glimmer of gold in the mud, something of real value in the slurry; a man can have the best hand in the world and still lose everything if he doesn’t know his own tells.

When Faraday pulls back, bitter on his tongue and soreness already pulling at the hinge of his jaw, Vasquez still has his eyes closed. “No point pretending you can’t see it,” Faraday says, and Vasquez shivers. “Not that it matters from down here, but it works out the same anyway. May as well enjoy yourself while you can.” He laughs, a little rough, and catches Vasquez’s gaze, the glimpse he sneaks from the corner of his eye. “Look at it this way. If either of us should be worried, it’s me, and far as I know, nobody ever died of sucking cock in a church.”

Vasquez groans, a sound halfway between frustration and amusement, and closes his eyes again. “Don’t push it,” he says, but at least his hands are open now; at least, when Faraday leans forward again, he doesn’t look away.

It takes Vasquez a moment to do more than that, but Faraday gives him every opportunity. He takes it slow, lets the head of Vasquez’s cock slip over his lower lip once or twice, and eventually Vasquez gets the hint. He holds Faraday in place with one hand, thumb pressed into the hollow of his cheek, and pushes his cock into Faraday’s mouth a slow inch at a time. By the time that Faraday chokes, throat seizing as he struggles for breath, his jaw is aching.

Vasquez holds him in place until his eyes are stinging and his throat has loosened a little, and then he lets Faraday move. He keeps it slow, fingernails catching on the corner of Faraday’s jaw as he controls the pace, and doesn’t seem to mind the mess that Faraday knows he’s making — mouth spit-slick and already swollen, black powder caught under his fingernails and ground into the half-inch of bare skin between Vasquez’s belt and his untucked shirt — as long as it’s on his terms.

Faraday wants to see more of him, suddenly, than this. He wants to push Vasquez’s shirt up and dig into his underbelly, to see if he’s half as solid as he looks; he wants to see which of them would win in a fair fight; he wants to see which of them would come out on top in an unfair one. He might be used to fighting dirty, but Faraday thinks that Vasquez probably has a trick or two of his own to have stayed ahead of the law for as long as he did.

It seems like a shame, then, that they only have a week, most of which will be spent on work. Impossible odds had seemed like a far more pleasant proposition when Faraday had been less interested in buying his way into the next round. Still, he’s made his choices; still, he’s played his hand. Vasquez makes a muffled noise above him, through gritted teeth, and Faraday resolves to make the most of what he has. Lady luck might favor him after all.

He digs his fingertips into the line of Vasquez’s hip then, and tugs him forward, because his patience is wearing thin after so much waiting and so much persuasion. If he can’t get a word of blasphemy out of Vasquez after all this, then he may as well give up now. Faraday goads Vasquez with his hands and mouth, the flat of his tongue and the give of his throat — easier now that he’s used to it, the pressure and the heat, hollowing him out and occupying the space — until Vasquez gasps, a half-syllable of what might equally be prayer or profanation.

That seems to do it. Vasquez stops being gentle, or perhaps afraid, and uses Faraday the way that he’s wanted all along. He digs his thumb into the hollow under Faraday’s ear, where it aches, and Faraday’s vision goes white with the pain of it for a moment. He gasps, and Vasquez fucks into his mouth, driving the remaining air from Faraday’s lungs and holding him hostage to Vasquez’s pleasure.

When Vasquez comes, he digs welts into the underside of Faraday’s jaw with the force of his grip. Faraday coughs for a moment when Vasquez lets go of him and wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand.

“What?” he says when he notices Vasquez watching him. “It’s a church. Don’t seem right to spit in here.”

“It,” Vasquez starts, and then gives him a look of incredible aggravation. “Really? This is where you draw the line?”

“I’m a complicated man,” Faraday says. “Really getting into this whole spirituality business, you know.”

Vasquez hisses something — libel on Faraday’s good name, no doubt — and pulls him up by the collar to pin him against the wall. “You are a bad man,” he says, half an inch from Faraday’s face.

Faraday shrugs. “Seems to be working out all right so far.”

“Half the time, you are all talk,” Vasquez goes on, and Faraday grins at that.

“Only half,” he points out, and bites his lip; his mouth still feels swollen, and judging by the way that Vasquez’s gaze drops for a moment, it looks it as well.

Vasquez looks back up. “The other half, you are even worse.”

“Look,” Faraday says, losing patience with this parrying, this play for time, the way that Vasquez’s hands are warm on his shoulders and the way that Vasquez’s thigh is pressed between his and the way that Vasquez is holding stubbornly, relentlessly still. “Hit me if you’ve a mind to, or let me go, but don’t keep a man waiting. It just ain’t right.”

“Ah,” Vasquez says, and looks immeasurably pleased. “So you do have a tell.”

“A—” Faraday begins, astonished, and laughs, unable to help himself. “—You son of a bitch,” he says. “Don’t try to play me!”

Vasquez leans in by another fraction of an inch. “What was that?” he says, and leans into Faraday, rocks his hips just enough so that Faraday can feel it. “I should stop?”

“Jesus,” Faraday says, and Vasquez grins at that. “For God’s sake. No, you bastard, don’t you dare.” He tugs at Vasquez’s shirt, fingertips brushing the small of Vasquez’s back like the scrape of a match, a sudden spark, and pulls him closer. “Just make it worth my while,” he says — head tipped back, stars blurred above him in the drifting smoke, wind humming through the burnt-out windows and settling the church around them like an exhaled sigh — and gives himself over to Vasquez’s capable hands, his sharp grin, the way that he moves like leaping flame.

At the end of the night — or, if Faraday is lucky and plays his hand well, the start of the morning — he’ll still have to sleep, and Faraday is under no illusions about the dreams that will come for him then. By the end of the week, it’s even odds that they’ll both be dead; by the end of the year, they might all be so much bleached bone and ash on the wind. In the meantime, he has a good cause and better company; he has his freedom and the means to defend it. The end of the night won’t come until later, and the end of the week might not come at all. The future is a long way off, and life is a long shot no matter what comes between the present and whatever is yet to pass.

Faraday is a gambling man. He'll take those odds.

In the meantime, he gasps for another breath, and with it he swears to God.


End file.
